Best? Hardly: I continue to have issues with "best of" lists, the latest being "The 50 Best Places To Live" in the current issue of Men's Journal. (Not available on-line yet as far as I can tell.) For a taste, here's the top ten:

1. Driggs, ID


2. Telluride, CO


3. Mammoth Lakes, CA


4. Crested Butte, CO


5. Bandera, TX


6. Jackson, WY


7. Bozeman, MT


8. Blacksburg, VA


9. Port Townsend, WA


10. Houghton, MI

Their criteria is supposedly as follows:

There are certain things a man wants out of a town: clean air. access to the outdoors, nice neighbors, maybe a good bar. We consulted our experts and amassed a huge database of towns just like that (with populations of about 50,000 or less). Then we conducted rigorous analysis of everything from the price of land to cancer rates to the ratio of men to women. These are the top fifty, in order, with special attention to the best in each region. All that's left for you to do is move.

Oh my. Where to begin?

"Maybe a good bar." Maybe? Maybe? You need several bars - a corner bar, a stylish club, a classy lounge, a sports bar, and a few others, preferably attached to good restaurants. And speaking of restaurants, here's the comment from the article about the best of the best: "Dining options in Driggs are limited, but Mike's serves up a mean plate of Buffalo meat," and "But here's the thing about Driggs: What it don't have, you don't want." Philistines.

"We consulted our experts," Judging from the number of ski towns and bitter cold wilderness outposts in the top ten, I'm thinking their experts consist of Buzzy, the Wacked-Out Snowboarder and the Senior Advisory Board of the Touque Makers of America. Do these people have no concept of WATERSPORTS or THE OCEAN? But maybe they're right, being able to justify buying that super-expensive high-tech winter gear makes life worthwhile.

"conducted rigorous analysis..." Please. The rigorous analysis seems to have ignored things like access to a good bookstore, Starbucks, sushi, reliable broadband, a good health club selection, the fine arts of any sort, not to mention any significant employment options.

"the ratio of men to women..." OK I'll give 'em that one.

Perfect example: The only Michigan town listed is Houghton. Do you know where Houghton is? Start in southern Michigan, which is a very northern state, and drive north for hundreds of miles. You run out of land so you have to cross the Mackinac Bridge. Then you keep going FURTHER north (and a bit west) until you run out of land again. As they say in the article, "Count on six month winters here, November through April, with more than 20 feet of snow..." Yeah, that's paradise alright.

Now contrast that to say, Dexter, MI (just to pick a random small town). There is one great restaurant in town (Cousin's Heritage Inn), and it's about 15 miles to the Common Grill in Chelsea which may just be the finest restaurant in the world. It's quiet, safe, with nice neighbors. Winter is about three or four months (which is more than plenty). Spring and Summer are amazing. And what it don't have, Ann Arbor (a fifteen minute drive away) does, including three huge bookstores, a great music scene, and more bars and restaurants than you could visit in a year.

Driggs ID, of course, has The World's Largest Potato.

This is the sort of list I would have expected from the trail-mix-munching, sleep-on-the-ground Luddites at Outside magazine who pride themselves on being able to identify wolf sub-species by the smell of their stool. Men's Journal owes us guys better.